Interview with Cris Winters, Author of Elementos impares
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Cris Winters has a sensual way with words. Have a taste here: “Scoliosis. Like my spine, my path follows an ‘S’ rather than a straight line. My skewed mind causes the vertebrae of my passions to rotate and arrange themselves in different ways. Some of the vertebrae I can distinguish are these: writing, journalism, cultural management, public relations, and event conceptualization. My passion-vertebrae are held together by cartilaginous discs united by a shared drive to tell stories, seek truth, and honor beauty. My spinal cord is this: to know myself, to spark conversations, and to build community.”
Cris is the brilliant mind and Mexican author behind the autobiographical book, Elementos impares, a testament to science, sex, memory, and self-identity. She dives into the parallels between reality and memory, science and love, under the guise of conscience and identity. Following her from girlhood through adulthood, the reader grows up with Cris, trailing deep into a sea of memories—drowning with ex-lovers, sexual gratification, and family moments. She compartmentalizes her love, her suffering, her emotions behind these memories through a coordinating element on the periodic table. Each memory masterfully, intricately fits its element, and that’s how science and love copulate to create a book on her truths. As she unravels her memories, Cris travels through the void to get to the core: herself, in all her beauty. Cris kindly bridged the international distance between us by making time for this virtual interview. She chatted about all things adolescence & girlhood, the writing craft, and the love for science and sex. |
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MELANIE ROMERO: I related so much to Elementos impares, especially since I also grew up in Mexico in the midst of my girlhood; I too had chronic jamaica breath! But, what makes this book so distinct in its purpose is that it’s a biography of your life, one full of highs and lows, accomplishments and privileges, love and sex, femininity and growth. How did the stages of your life—from a child to a teen to an adult and now writer/artist—mark the progression of science and the inclusion of the periodic table?
CRIS WINTERS: At one point in my creative process, I seriously questioned whether I should keep the childhood and teenage fragments in the book—or if writing them had simply served a personal purpose but didn’t belong in the final version. Eventually, I decided to keep them. I felt they revealed a lot about who this character is and why she is the way she is. They captured the origin of her deep need for approval, which runs throughout the novel, as well as a persistent feeling of loneliness. That said, even though those chapters are named after elements, I felt they didn’t quite belong to the “periodic table” structure. That’s why I chose to introduce them with a suggested reading note, labeling them as “optional texts” and “suggested texts.” As for the rest of the table, I’m drawn to the fact that in the real periodic table, elements were discovered over time—and that there’s still room for new ones. The table became a metaphor for our ongoing evolution, our growth, and our capacity for reinvention. The protagonist, like the rest of the characters, is a work in progress. There are no villains in this story—just people reacting in different ways to different situations or, to stay within the metaphor, to different “chemical reactions.”
ROMERO: In turn, what did/do you see as the purpose of the periodic table in interweaving your life stories together?
WINTERS: It was a decision that helped me mostly in two ways:
1. Like a kind of lifeline in this metaphorical dive. It allowed me to go deep into my history, memories, and wounds, without getting lost in the past. It created a sense of distance between the story as a literary object and my present.
2. On the other hand, it was a stylistic decision. It helped establish the rules of the game; to understand, for example, that each chapter would be titled after an element, or that—just like in Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table—some elements would be named after their chemical properties, others after their place of origin, and so on.
It also gave me a new language, as the abbreviations of the chemical elements at times turned into a kind of onomatopoeia, and at other times into sounds I used to craft poetic figures. For example, the repetition of titanium’s abbreviation (Ti) became titi, a word for pain that originated in my childhood, when I would say I had “titi” whenever I felt pain. The “S” from sulfur became a premonition of something going wrong. Oganesson turned into organesón, the word I use instead of orgasm, and so on. The periodic table also helped me feel that I was on the right path. Rick Rubin explains that ideas are in the air, in a sort of “drive” you download them from—that if you let an idea pass, you might later see another artist bring it to life, because it was time to “be born.” I felt connected to that drive, because I started noticing parallels between my life and Mendeleev’s. The periodic table turned the act of writing into something both playful and addictive.
ROMERO: This book is strongly rooted in the power of memory, more specifically your own memory. How were you able to retrace the entirety of your life and pick and choose the moments, the men, the experiences, and parallel them with an element on the periodic table?
WINTERS: Although the book is based on my life, I like to think of it as fiction, because it’s gone through several filters: my point of view (who I am and how I experience things), my memory (we know that every time we recall something, that memory changes—and surely, there are things that happened that I simply don’t remember), the curation of memories (what I chose to tell to shape the story), the act of writing itself (my voice as an author), and finally the editing process. That said, I do think I’m a sensitive person with a good memory, and I also tend to keep journals—not traditional ones, but I jot down notes in my calendar or take photos of everyday moments that end up stored on my Instagram. My background as a magazine editor and film lover also helped me quickly identify which moments were powerful—whether because they clearly revealed who these characters are or because they pushed the story forward. The criteria for choosing the men who appear in the book were the same: maybe there’s someone I truly loved in real life who doesn’t show up in the narrative, but whose “lesson” was already embodied in another chapter—or whose presence, in the end, was more about affection than narrative importance. As for the writing process itself, one of the first things I did was build an Excel inventory: one column with all the men in my life, another with all the elements from the periodic table, and another with narrative beats. From there, I began choosing what to use. There were many scenes I wrote that ultimately didn’t make the final cut during editing.
ROMERO: I truly believe that the parallelism between an element on the periodic table with one of your life experiences was a genius move—something never been seen before, a blatant artistic and stylistic choice to compartmentalize memory. What motivated you to write about what people believe to be two extremes: love & science?
WINTERS: I honestly don’t think it was ever a choice. At first, I simply wanted to tell the story of a young writer finding her voice through the chaos of romantic relationships—particularly through a toxic one involving a narcissistic man. Because it was my first novel and so much of it drew from my personal experiences, I struggled with impostor syndrome. But then, during a beautiful stay at a writers’ residency in France, something shifted. I was on a roll—the words kept flowing—and being surrounded by other creatives helped release that inner blockage. Still, something was missing. What was missing, I realized, was the melody of the novel—because for me, literature is deeply musical. Suddenly, I remembered how, back in high school, a teacher made us memorize the bones of the skull with a rhythmic chant that went something like: frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital… lower jaw, upper jaw, the mouth! That rhythm unlocked something, and brought back another one from the same teacher—the one I used to memorize the chemical elements: hydrogen, lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, cesium, francium. Not only did that list contain the rhythm I was looking for—it also held a kind of spiritual resonance. Although I was raised Catholic, I stopped identifying with the religion in my youth. But during a secuestro exprés—what we call a short-term kidnapping in Mexico—I found myself praying the “Our Father”. At the time, I didn’t have the awareness to recognize that more than a Catholic prayer, those words were a kind of mantra that connected me to my parents and made me feel safe. Instead, I felt like a hypocrite. After that incident, I began repeating chemical elements to calm myself during moments of anxiety: hydrogen, lithium, sodium, potassium. It became my own secular mantra. So, in France, I had my eureka moment—that was what had been missing from the novel. I started researching the periodic table and found that it was published in 1869. That date struck me, because one of the central relationships in the book was defined by a complete lack of sexual connection. In real life, that partner and I lived in an apartment numbered 69. It felt like a cosmic joke. From there, the parallels between my life and that of Dmitri Mendeleev began to surface, and I felt I was on the right path. On a more intellectual level, I also loved the idea of trying to impose scientific order on something fundamentally unscientific—love. That irony made me laugh. And for me, humor is essential. Those two extremes—love and science—in many ways opposites (one rooted in reason, the other in emotion), are held together by a narrative thread and a sharp sense of humor. That tension is almost a perfect summary of the main character herself: full of contradictions, yet always able to laugh at her own expense.
ROMERO: When did you realize you wanted your life’s story (with the good, the bad, the ugly) to be inspiration for your book?
WINTERS: It wasn’t so much a desire as it was a necessity. After a very tumultuous relationship in
which my then-partner made me feel like an unreliable narrator, I felt the need to reclaim my voice through writing. As time went on, I kept living—and found myself in another relationship that felt like the yin to the yang of the first: just as toxic and impossible, but instead of being sexless, it was built entirely around sex. Those two relationships became the foundation of the book, and then I began to feel the urge to write about other things—to craft a book with the tone, honesty, and rhythm I would have loved to read when I was younger. I considered changing my name and disguising my autobiography more thoroughly, but perhaps—true to my millennial roots—I decided not to. I didn’t feel like hiding.
ROMERO: What did you discover about yourself during and after writing this book?
WINTERS: When I first started writing the book, the idea of reaching 100 pages thrilled me. By the time I finished, what excited me most was cutting 100 pages. In many ways, it became my graduation as an editor. I discovered that I do have discipline, that I’m at my happiest and most functional when I’m creating, that my ability to be vulnerable is my superpower, and that I’m an alchemist—turning pain into gold. Writing this book was the equivalent of years of therapy. I know myself better than ever, and I honor every moment I’ve lived. It was incredibly empowering to start a project from scratch, watch it come to life on its own terms, and take on every role—writer, editor, publisher, publicist. It pushed me to advocate for myself and my work. Having to do that made me realize just how much I truly believe in what I’ve created. Historically, in my professional life, I’ve never been able to sell something I didn’t believe in. The comments I’ve received—about how vulnerable and honest the book is, or how openly sexual—it made me realize that I’m a much freer person than I thought I was. I love it!
ROMERO: When did you know becoming a writer was your calling?
WINTERS: I always suspected it. I was that kid who got chosen to give the end-of-year speech. I won the spelling bee, loved reading, and writing essays came naturally to me. I was always very observant and drawn to storytelling. But I think I fully embraced myself as a writer in my twenties—right when I decided to write this novel.
ROMERO: This book is in Spanish, your native tongue, and serves as an ode to your Mexican roots. How do you envision this book traveling across borders, through different countries, and finding a place in international bookstores?
WINTERS: Although it is written in Spanish, I believe it speaks to universal experiences such as being a woman, finding your voice as a creator, and exploring the search for love. I would love for it to find its place in all Spanish-speaking countries (including the United States) and eventually be translated into other languages.
ROMERO: What’s next on your horizon? Will we see you again in another book?
WINTERS: There’s a horror story that has been brewing in my mind for years; I hope it will soon see the light in the form of a book. I’m also working on some audiovisual projects that I hope to talk about soon. Another thing I’m interested in is exploring essays more deeply.
ROMERO: As a horror fanatic, I am thrilled for your next book endeavor! I think there may be just another author interview with you in the cards. Surely, this horror book will take a life of its own.
Cris Winters is the author of Elementos Impares (2024) and co-author of El ABC de las Telenovelas (Lil’ Libros, 2022). She's the former editor of Dónde Ir and Destino Uber magazines, and has contributed to publications such as Frente and Chilango. She holds a BA in Communication from Universidad Iberoamericana and an MA in Cinematic Arts from Casa Lamm. She was a writer-in-residence at CAMAC Art Centre in France. Currently, she resides in Mexico City.
CRIS WINTERS: At one point in my creative process, I seriously questioned whether I should keep the childhood and teenage fragments in the book—or if writing them had simply served a personal purpose but didn’t belong in the final version. Eventually, I decided to keep them. I felt they revealed a lot about who this character is and why she is the way she is. They captured the origin of her deep need for approval, which runs throughout the novel, as well as a persistent feeling of loneliness. That said, even though those chapters are named after elements, I felt they didn’t quite belong to the “periodic table” structure. That’s why I chose to introduce them with a suggested reading note, labeling them as “optional texts” and “suggested texts.” As for the rest of the table, I’m drawn to the fact that in the real periodic table, elements were discovered over time—and that there’s still room for new ones. The table became a metaphor for our ongoing evolution, our growth, and our capacity for reinvention. The protagonist, like the rest of the characters, is a work in progress. There are no villains in this story—just people reacting in different ways to different situations or, to stay within the metaphor, to different “chemical reactions.”
ROMERO: In turn, what did/do you see as the purpose of the periodic table in interweaving your life stories together?
WINTERS: It was a decision that helped me mostly in two ways:
1. Like a kind of lifeline in this metaphorical dive. It allowed me to go deep into my history, memories, and wounds, without getting lost in the past. It created a sense of distance between the story as a literary object and my present.
2. On the other hand, it was a stylistic decision. It helped establish the rules of the game; to understand, for example, that each chapter would be titled after an element, or that—just like in Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table—some elements would be named after their chemical properties, others after their place of origin, and so on.
It also gave me a new language, as the abbreviations of the chemical elements at times turned into a kind of onomatopoeia, and at other times into sounds I used to craft poetic figures. For example, the repetition of titanium’s abbreviation (Ti) became titi, a word for pain that originated in my childhood, when I would say I had “titi” whenever I felt pain. The “S” from sulfur became a premonition of something going wrong. Oganesson turned into organesón, the word I use instead of orgasm, and so on. The periodic table also helped me feel that I was on the right path. Rick Rubin explains that ideas are in the air, in a sort of “drive” you download them from—that if you let an idea pass, you might later see another artist bring it to life, because it was time to “be born.” I felt connected to that drive, because I started noticing parallels between my life and Mendeleev’s. The periodic table turned the act of writing into something both playful and addictive.
ROMERO: This book is strongly rooted in the power of memory, more specifically your own memory. How were you able to retrace the entirety of your life and pick and choose the moments, the men, the experiences, and parallel them with an element on the periodic table?
WINTERS: Although the book is based on my life, I like to think of it as fiction, because it’s gone through several filters: my point of view (who I am and how I experience things), my memory (we know that every time we recall something, that memory changes—and surely, there are things that happened that I simply don’t remember), the curation of memories (what I chose to tell to shape the story), the act of writing itself (my voice as an author), and finally the editing process. That said, I do think I’m a sensitive person with a good memory, and I also tend to keep journals—not traditional ones, but I jot down notes in my calendar or take photos of everyday moments that end up stored on my Instagram. My background as a magazine editor and film lover also helped me quickly identify which moments were powerful—whether because they clearly revealed who these characters are or because they pushed the story forward. The criteria for choosing the men who appear in the book were the same: maybe there’s someone I truly loved in real life who doesn’t show up in the narrative, but whose “lesson” was already embodied in another chapter—or whose presence, in the end, was more about affection than narrative importance. As for the writing process itself, one of the first things I did was build an Excel inventory: one column with all the men in my life, another with all the elements from the periodic table, and another with narrative beats. From there, I began choosing what to use. There were many scenes I wrote that ultimately didn’t make the final cut during editing.
ROMERO: I truly believe that the parallelism between an element on the periodic table with one of your life experiences was a genius move—something never been seen before, a blatant artistic and stylistic choice to compartmentalize memory. What motivated you to write about what people believe to be two extremes: love & science?
WINTERS: I honestly don’t think it was ever a choice. At first, I simply wanted to tell the story of a young writer finding her voice through the chaos of romantic relationships—particularly through a toxic one involving a narcissistic man. Because it was my first novel and so much of it drew from my personal experiences, I struggled with impostor syndrome. But then, during a beautiful stay at a writers’ residency in France, something shifted. I was on a roll—the words kept flowing—and being surrounded by other creatives helped release that inner blockage. Still, something was missing. What was missing, I realized, was the melody of the novel—because for me, literature is deeply musical. Suddenly, I remembered how, back in high school, a teacher made us memorize the bones of the skull with a rhythmic chant that went something like: frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital… lower jaw, upper jaw, the mouth! That rhythm unlocked something, and brought back another one from the same teacher—the one I used to memorize the chemical elements: hydrogen, lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, cesium, francium. Not only did that list contain the rhythm I was looking for—it also held a kind of spiritual resonance. Although I was raised Catholic, I stopped identifying with the religion in my youth. But during a secuestro exprés—what we call a short-term kidnapping in Mexico—I found myself praying the “Our Father”. At the time, I didn’t have the awareness to recognize that more than a Catholic prayer, those words were a kind of mantra that connected me to my parents and made me feel safe. Instead, I felt like a hypocrite. After that incident, I began repeating chemical elements to calm myself during moments of anxiety: hydrogen, lithium, sodium, potassium. It became my own secular mantra. So, in France, I had my eureka moment—that was what had been missing from the novel. I started researching the periodic table and found that it was published in 1869. That date struck me, because one of the central relationships in the book was defined by a complete lack of sexual connection. In real life, that partner and I lived in an apartment numbered 69. It felt like a cosmic joke. From there, the parallels between my life and that of Dmitri Mendeleev began to surface, and I felt I was on the right path. On a more intellectual level, I also loved the idea of trying to impose scientific order on something fundamentally unscientific—love. That irony made me laugh. And for me, humor is essential. Those two extremes—love and science—in many ways opposites (one rooted in reason, the other in emotion), are held together by a narrative thread and a sharp sense of humor. That tension is almost a perfect summary of the main character herself: full of contradictions, yet always able to laugh at her own expense.
ROMERO: When did you realize you wanted your life’s story (with the good, the bad, the ugly) to be inspiration for your book?
WINTERS: It wasn’t so much a desire as it was a necessity. After a very tumultuous relationship in
which my then-partner made me feel like an unreliable narrator, I felt the need to reclaim my voice through writing. As time went on, I kept living—and found myself in another relationship that felt like the yin to the yang of the first: just as toxic and impossible, but instead of being sexless, it was built entirely around sex. Those two relationships became the foundation of the book, and then I began to feel the urge to write about other things—to craft a book with the tone, honesty, and rhythm I would have loved to read when I was younger. I considered changing my name and disguising my autobiography more thoroughly, but perhaps—true to my millennial roots—I decided not to. I didn’t feel like hiding.
ROMERO: What did you discover about yourself during and after writing this book?
WINTERS: When I first started writing the book, the idea of reaching 100 pages thrilled me. By the time I finished, what excited me most was cutting 100 pages. In many ways, it became my graduation as an editor. I discovered that I do have discipline, that I’m at my happiest and most functional when I’m creating, that my ability to be vulnerable is my superpower, and that I’m an alchemist—turning pain into gold. Writing this book was the equivalent of years of therapy. I know myself better than ever, and I honor every moment I’ve lived. It was incredibly empowering to start a project from scratch, watch it come to life on its own terms, and take on every role—writer, editor, publisher, publicist. It pushed me to advocate for myself and my work. Having to do that made me realize just how much I truly believe in what I’ve created. Historically, in my professional life, I’ve never been able to sell something I didn’t believe in. The comments I’ve received—about how vulnerable and honest the book is, or how openly sexual—it made me realize that I’m a much freer person than I thought I was. I love it!
ROMERO: When did you know becoming a writer was your calling?
WINTERS: I always suspected it. I was that kid who got chosen to give the end-of-year speech. I won the spelling bee, loved reading, and writing essays came naturally to me. I was always very observant and drawn to storytelling. But I think I fully embraced myself as a writer in my twenties—right when I decided to write this novel.
ROMERO: This book is in Spanish, your native tongue, and serves as an ode to your Mexican roots. How do you envision this book traveling across borders, through different countries, and finding a place in international bookstores?
WINTERS: Although it is written in Spanish, I believe it speaks to universal experiences such as being a woman, finding your voice as a creator, and exploring the search for love. I would love for it to find its place in all Spanish-speaking countries (including the United States) and eventually be translated into other languages.
ROMERO: What’s next on your horizon? Will we see you again in another book?
WINTERS: There’s a horror story that has been brewing in my mind for years; I hope it will soon see the light in the form of a book. I’m also working on some audiovisual projects that I hope to talk about soon. Another thing I’m interested in is exploring essays more deeply.
ROMERO: As a horror fanatic, I am thrilled for your next book endeavor! I think there may be just another author interview with you in the cards. Surely, this horror book will take a life of its own.
Cris Winters is the author of Elementos Impares (2024) and co-author of El ABC de las Telenovelas (Lil’ Libros, 2022). She's the former editor of Dónde Ir and Destino Uber magazines, and has contributed to publications such as Frente and Chilango. She holds a BA in Communication from Universidad Iberoamericana and an MA in Cinematic Arts from Casa Lamm. She was a writer-in-residence at CAMAC Art Centre in France. Currently, she resides in Mexico City.
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